Pray Like This

Matthew 6:5–14 ESV

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you,

Intro: Prayer is LIke Breathing

Breathing comes natural to us. As humans, from our birth until our death, we breathe. It’s a sign of life in infants, and it’s something we do for the rest of our lives.

Everything we do requires us to breathe, and we can usually feel the effects of losing our breath.

I think of being 7500 feet above sea level and struggling to catch my breath when I walked up the stairs.

I think back to asthma attacks that left me struggling to get a breath without coughing. Agonizing panic attacks often leave me staggering to catch my breath.

E.M. Bounds is one of the most prolific authors on the topic of prayer and he says:

“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing!” -E.M. Bounds

FCF: We are needy people in need of prayer. From the time sin entered the world until now, we are reliant on God for everything. Jesus says, “Apart from me, you can do nothing”. This is absolutely true in every moment of the Christian life.

Main Point: God desires our sincere, Kingdom-focused, gospel-driven prayers.

I. Our prayers need to be sincere, not self-serving and superficial.

How NOT To Pray

Jesus gives us two examples to learn from: The hypocrite and the Gentiles (unbelievers). Let’s see what we can learn from each person.

The Hypocrite:Self-Seeking Prayer

Hypocrite means “actor” or “someone who pretends to be something he is not”. Literally “stage-player”. This person loves to stand and pray in the synagogues and streets to get praised by other. In other words, they’re prayers are self-serving. It builds up their ego to pray and then get a pat on the back.

The hypocrite’s reward is a pat on the back from man. But this is their only reward. And it’s a cheap one! He values the praise applause of man more than the approval of God.

Pray with Sincerity: Devote Yourself to Secret Prayer

“You must not be like the hypocrite”…

Here Jesus is teaching us about the place and the posture of prayer. The secret or quiet place is “into your room” where you “shut the door”. He’s not saying you can ONLY pray privately. The Scriptures call us to pray together in other places. Rather, he’s arguing that the antidote to phony, self-serving prayer is private prayer.

Private prayer is the cornerstone of a strong prayer life and growing faith.

When we seek God in private prayer, we are devoting ourselves to spending time with and enjoying God.

Our private prayers strengthen our public prayers and corporate worship.

Praying in secret gains us a reward nobody knows about and nobody but God can give us (v. 6). God draws near to those who draw near to Him.

Praying in secret keeps us humble and reveals the genuineness of our public prayers.

If we want to be strong Christians, we must be strong first in the prayer closet.

Satan doesn’t fear reading or studying Christians. He fears praying Christians because prayer gives life to our reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating on Scripture.

Gospel Call: The greatest private prayer you can pray is the prayer of faith in Christ. Have you called on the name of the Lord? Have you confessed your sins to God in prayer? Have you sought forgiveness through the buried and risen Savior? Let that be your first breath and prayer as a Christian! Call on His name if you haven’t already!

II. Our prayers need to be kingdom-focused, not worldly. 

The antidote to performance in prayer is to pray in secret. But what about the Gentile prayer?

The Gentiles: Superficial Prayer

The Gentiles are unbelievers or pagans who didn’t know God and didn’t know how to pray rightly.

They thought they could appease their gods by their long prayers and abundant words.

However, this babbling (a fair translation of the Greek) or heaping up of empty phrases was not pleasing to God.

The Gentile prayer lacks an understanding of God.

His praying shows that he doesn’t think God is all-knowing or sovereign.

He prays like God doesn’t already know what he needs. Similar to the hypocrite, he is focused on performance in prayer. He thinks God will reward his eloquent prayers by listening more closely.

Pray Kingdom Prayers: Devote Yourself to the Lord’s Prayer

We know this as the Lord’s Prayer, but it may be better called the Disciple’s Prayer because Jesus didn’t pray this prayer in its fullness. He didn’t need to ask for forgiveness of his debts or trespasses.

What does Jesus mean when he calls us to pray in this way?

This prayer represents a template for Kingdom-focused praying.

He isn’t saying we can’t pray longer or different prayers. However, this is a specific way for us to pray. In fact, later when his disciples said, “Lord, teach us to pray”, he gave them a shortened version of this prayer again.

Notice the plural language in the prayer: “Our Father”, “Give us this day our daily bread”, etc. This is a reminder that our praying is not separated from the body of Christ. When we pray like this, we pray together.

This prayer is God-centered and Kingdom-focused all the way through.

Our Father in heaven: This is a reminder that our Father is not on this earth but in heaven. We see this throughout the Scriptures, especially in the OT and OT prayers.

Hallowed be your name: This a reminder to pray for a heart that treats God’s name as holy. It’s also a call to pray that the world would honor God as holy.

Your Kingdom come: This is as kingdom-oriented as you can get. We are saying Lord, let your Kingdom come. Bring your Kingdom to invade this world we are in. Bring in disciples who can usher in your Kingdom. Let that be our chief aim!

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven: Father, lead us and guide us to do everything according to Your will. Just as the angels submit to your will help us.

This is similar to what Jesus prayed in the garden. We are confessing that whatever plans God has, they are best. Bring your will. Help us to submit and be obedient to do your will.

Give us this day our daily bread. Whether we have food in the fridge or not, we are praying in humility. God give us what we need. Give us the energy to show up to work. Help us to do a good job. Keep our paycheck coming into the account, and never let us forget that you’re our provider.

Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgive our debtors. We know we are sinful people. Confession of sin has a vital place in the Christian life. We need to pray, “Lord, forgive us our sins and we forgive others who have sinned against us.” If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Our final petition is asking for God to guide us in a path that won’t lead us toward sin and death. Rather, we are praying for deliverance. Temptation will come. If we are following the Spirit’s lead, we won’t walk into it as often. But when it comes, we are asking God to show us the way out.

What about the missing part at the end?

Does this mean the ESV (and other is a corrupt, new age Bible version? Not at all!

There are two ways to look at this:

Some say there’s something missing from the Bible and the corrupted translations are trying to keep us from the truth.

However, the truths of this missing section are found both in the margin of the ESV and in 1 Chronicles 29:11.

It’s not found in Luke’s rendering of the Lord’s prayer either. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t belong in Matthew. It’s just not found there either.

More likely, a scribe (or some church leaders) added a worshipful ending the prayer to use in public worship. Over time, this got included into the re-written manuscripts, including the ones used for the KJV.

Usually, these things happen when the scribes were re-writing the manuscripts by hand and saw the notes from another manuscripts margin and accidentally inserted it. Sometimes it happened when a scribe was trying to fix something that didn’t look right.

The important thing is this: the ending of the Lord’s Prayer as we memorized it doesn’t contradict any other Scripture. It’s also not found in the earliest manuscripts of Matthew, and it’s not found in Luke in any translation.

You’re free to pray it and quote it, but there’s a high degree of certainty, even in the early church days, that the ending was added to make it flow better in liturgies and church services.

Pray the Lord’s Prayer

Read or recite the Lord’s prayer from memory.

Take each petition of the Lord’s prayer and turn it into a prayer.

Slow down and pray them through as much as you need to with as much time as you have available.

Model this for the church

III. Our prayers need to be gospel-driven, seeking forgiveness from God as we offer it to others. 

Jesus finishes his instruction on the Lord’s prayer with Scripture we don’t normally quote when we quote His prayer.

As Christians, we don’t seek forgiveness from God without offering forgiveness to others.

Is Jesus teaching that our forgiveness is based on our forgiving of others? No. Jesus teaches that genuine faith has real fruit. Similarly, James says, “faith without works is dead”.

The Christians who forgive others can rest assured that God has and will continue to forgive them.

Not because they earn God’s forgiveness through their forgiveness. Rather, because they know that the gospel has created such grace and love in their hearts.

If we can’t and won’t forgive others, we give evidence that we don’t appreciate the gospel and haven’t understood the weight of our sin and the cost of the forgiveness of our sins.

I want to stress that this doesn’t mean God expects us to take sin lightly. There are times were people sin against in grievous and horrific ways. He will bring us to the point of forgiveness in those situations. This doesn’t mean that God requires reconciliation in every situation. Sometimes, it’s best to stay away from someone who is dangerous to your body or soul. He will give you the heart desire to forgive them, even without demanding you to reconcile.

Our forgiveness was costly, and forgiving others will cost us something.

Forgiveness was so costly that Jesus gave His life. He laid down His life on a cross for us. We, too, are called to lay down our lives for one another. This is a picture of the love of God.

While we may not reconcile with everyone who sins against us, especially if the sin was heinous or grievous, we can extend forgiveness because we’ve seen what God has done for us.

Forgiveness will unchain our hearts from so many burdens and so much pent up anger.

Pray Gospel-Driven Prayers

Ask for forgiveness with confidence in the cross of Christ.

We don’t approach God on our own merit. We come to Him through His Son. When we feel like failures, confession and repentance lead the way to improvement.

Walk away from prayer with confidence that God will gladly help you grow.

Once you seek forgiveness, don’t walk away thinking “I’ll never get better”. Rather, move forward in confidence knowing that the Holy Spirit will help you put sin to death and walk in obedience.

Express your pain and grief to God when people sin against you.

When it comes to forgiving others, you can tell God how you truly feel inside. Ask Him to help you sort out the wrong feelings and thoughts from the right ones. As for forgiveness for sinful thoughts and grace to think rightly.

Forgive people in your prayer closet so you can forgive them publicly.

Talk it over with God. Ask Him for the heart to forgive. Tell Him you forgive them before you even extend it to them. Because even if they don’t want your forgiveness or reconciliation is not safe or possible, you have forgiven them in your heart before God.

Sincere forgiveness means you can forgive people in the presence of God and not just for their sake or the praise of others.

Conclusion: As disciples, prayer is indispensable for true spiritual growth and discipleship.

If you don’t learn anything from this series, learn these two things:

You can’t grow and thrive spiritually if you don’t hear God’s voice through His Word.

• You also can’t grow and thrive spiritually if you don’t use your voice to talk to God through prayer.

Challenge: I want to challenge you this morning to build a solid devotional rhythm. Write out a plan to spend at least 20 minutes with the Lord.

Pray through the Lord’s prayer for at 5 minutes.

Read Scripture for at least 5 minutes.

Spend 2-3 minutes memorizing your passage.

Spend 5-7 minutes meditating on your passage.

Finish your time with a prayer of thanksgiving for your time with God.